


Prism

by Domenika Marzione (domarzione)



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Gen, History, POV Nile Freeman, regrets they have a few
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:21:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26089351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/domarzione/pseuds/Domenika%20Marzione
Summary: Are you good guys or bad guys?Depends on the century.
Comments: 24
Kudos: 159





	Prism

"Are you good guys or bad guys?"

It's a question that seems silly now, but it lingers in Nile's head long after she stops looking at her hands and seeing them mangled the way they were when she took the swan dive from Merrick's penthouse. They are good people, even Booker. The others wouldn't be so hurt and angry if Booker weren't someone they loved and liked. 

They had given her an honest answer when she'd asked, maybe too honest because if they're good people who think they've done bad things... they probably have. 

"Mostly it's history making fools of us," Joe tells her when she finally summons the courage to ask. "Decisions that seemed right and reasonable at the time." 

They're in Zambia, living in a beautiful compound a half hour's drive from Lusaka, and Nile's already put a few thousand kilometers on the truck doing tourist stuff because she's not yet able to live by the slow pace the others fall into when not on a mission. But it's December and it's raining again, so she's sitting in the courtyard under a canopy of trees and umbrellas watching Joe practice calligraphy. 

"Reasonable," she repeats as a prompt instead of going with the "mostly," which is what she really wants to follow up on but realizes that this is a topic that has to be approached carefully and probably indirectly. 

Joe puts more attention than he needs to into the strokes of his brush, then pauses and holds the brush up and to the side of the page. 

"The idea that everyone has value and worth and a right to anything, it's very new," he says, looking at her with sad eyes. "It's obvious to you and you react to anything less with the righteous anger of the just facing injustice. This is America's gift to the world, that you can be so generous with liberty and justice and still thrive. That it's not a zero-sum equation and there is enough freedom for everyone and nobody has to go without."

"That's not quite how it's working out," Nile retorts. 

"It's imperfect because we are imperfect," Joe says, waving her comment away with the dismissiveness she _hates_ because it makes her feel like a child. "It has been a success because you are furious at the imperfections, not at the failure. It was a ridiculous idea at the time and if Booker were here he'd tell you about how miraculous America is because of what he lived through in Paris. He was your age during the Terror and _that_ was a failure."

She can't just sit there and take the relativism that comes with a thousand years of historical perspective, not when it's stuff she's seen up close. And she wants to be angry at Joe (this time, but it's been Nicky and Andy other times) but she's really angry at herself because she knows she'll be doing this at some point, too, and she doesn't want it to happen. It doesn't feel like gaining wisdom to her - it feels like she'll be losing something important. 

"So what did you do before America?" she asks instead of saying that. She doesn't want to let Joe off the hook for the original question because if she has to squirm now because of historical perspective, so should he. 

"We lived by our biases and our beliefs," he answers and she can tell he knows what she's doing. And he's letting her and that puts the pin in her anger because his willingness to match her vulnerability with his is never not awe-inducing. "We didn't stop things we could have stopped. Sometimes we were what should have been stopped. Nicky and I were raised to hate the unbelievers and came to see the value in each other, but we did not always see the value in everyone else. We have seen enough Jewish blood to paint the world over, but it didn't always bother us. We saw slavery and saw it as the natural order of things. We accepted the idea that a people or a faith could be tainted by its very nature and did not deserve mercy or kindness or respect because that's how it had always been. 

"Time gives us the grace to forgive others their weaknesses and mistakes and to see their virtues," he says after taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. "But it also takes away our ability to forgive ourselves because it reveals our own faults. We learn and we grow and we see that the choices we didn't make become larger, the actions we did take become immense." 

He puts down the brush and holds out his hands, palms up. "Copley can show us his map of our good deeds, but here I see all of my failures and I know them to be the greater sum. They are a part of me and they always will be, eternally fresh and vital like the rest."

She thinks back to that day in Copley's office, the three of them looking around at proof of their beneficence. She'd thought they hadn't been able to see it because they were too close to see the big picture, but now she realizes that wasn't it at all. They didn't see because they couldn't look past their sense of shame and failure. History constantly reminds them of all they didn't do - and all that they did do and now regret - and the world lives with those consequences. Nobody had ever shown them the flip side, the way one good deed telescoped out to a world-saving event later on. That they had a legacy of good and great and _necessary._ She's been grateful she got to see it so early on in this weird new life, to know that there's a purpose to what they are and what they do, but it breaks her heart that the others had to wait millennia to see the same. 

"Sometimes it's really obvious that you all lived centuries without mirrors," she tells him with an exaggerated shake of her head. "And it's not just the haircuts." 

He reaches out with one hand to clasp her wrist, squeezing for a second before letting go and picking up his brush again. "You're a good woman, Nile Freeman. And you will be for centuries to come." 

**Author's Note:**

> [This has been posted to tumblr if you'd like to like or reblog there](https://laporcupina.tumblr.com/post/627358783024332800/the-old-guard-prism)


End file.
